The Land Laid Waste by Sin

Joel 1:1-12

1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

2 Hear this, you elders,
And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land!
Has anything like this happened in your days,
Or even in the days of your fathers?
3 Tell your children about it,
Let your children tell their children,
And their children another generation.

4 What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten;
What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten;
And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.

5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep;
And wail, all you drinkers of wine,
Because of the new wine,
For it has been cut off from your mouth.

6 For a nation has come up against My land,
Strong, and without number;
His teeth are the teeth of a lion,
And he has the fangs of a fierce lion.

7 He has laid waste My vine,
And ruined My fig tree;
He has stripped it bare and thrown it away;
Its branches are made white.

8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth
For the husband of her youth.

9 The grain offering and the drink offering
Have been cut off from the house of the LORD;
The priests mourn, who minister to the LORD.

10 The field is wasted,
The land mourns;
For the grain is ruined,
The new wine is dried up,
The oil fails.

11 Be ashamed, you farmers,
Wail, you vinedressers,
For the wheat and the barley;
Because the harvest of the field has perished.

12 The vine has dried up,
And the fig tree has withered;
The pomegranate tree,
The palm tree also,
And the apple tree—
All the trees of the field are withered;
Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.

Like the plague of locusts on Egypt (Ex. 10:1–20), Israel suffered the same destruction for their rejection of the LORD through their idolatry and immortality.  Joel was given God’s message of the seriousness of the situation which was man astonishment to the hearers he readers.  Nobody heard of such a thing, destruction on themselves in a similar manner as on their enemies who had them in bondage for four hundred years in Egypt!  Their return to Egypt’s idolatry brought one of the plagues on their own land, that of the devouring locusts in waves that ate until all was consumed.  Their plentiful fruitfulness was diminished because of continuous and unrepentant sin against God and man.  This message brought the seriousness home to them.  Drunk with iniquities, they were called to awaken from their drunken stupor and weep in repentance to turn back from sin to Him.  The Assyrian army was leveraged against them as well to decimate what was left in the land to drive the point of discipline home through great loss of what they felt entitled to without reciprocating God’s goodness to Him by following His Word and worshiping only Him.  It was a sorrow as if losing their husband as all sacrifices were taken away to atone for these sins held to so dearly, a spiritual adultery against their LORD.  Therefore, the land was stripped bare and enemies brought to bear against them to drive them to turn from sin.  Their shame of total loss was pointed out as a reminder that fruitless replaced fruitfulness as the worm of sin once again entered the forbidden fruit of seeking knowledge in their own imagination (Genesis 2:17, 3:5, of idols made by their own hands instead of living according to every word of God (Hebrews 5:14, Matthew 4:4).  Their land was laid waste by sin.  This was their joy and fruitfulness taken away as it is for all who go astray and need repentance.  May we learn from this example and keep our eyes on Jesus Christ and His word to keep sin at bay lest we also stray.